Is a healthy environment a human right? Testing the idea in Appalachia

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Disclosure statement

Nicholas F. Stump does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Do we have a fundamental right to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food? The idea of environmental human rights is receiving growing attention worldwide, driven by our global ecological crisis. But the United States has lagged behind in codifying these rights into laws and in successfully furthering them.

While this may seem like an issue for legal scholars, it has very real importance for regions like Appalachia, where I work. Coal mining has caused widespread ecological and health damage here for more than a century, alongside other industries such as chemical manufacturing and, recently, natural gas production.

Few international agreements explicitly refer to environmental human rights. At the national level, however, more than 100 countries around the world have constitutions that enshrine environmental rights to some degree, including Brazil and Kenya.

Only a handful of U.S. states, including Pennsylvania and Hawaii, have constitutions that explicitly incorporate environmental rights. What is more, these provisions were largely established decades ago and have had uneven success in their enforcement.

Appalachia’s environmental challenges

Appalachia is a classic exemplar of the “natural resource curse” – a theory developed by social scientists to explain why some places that are rich in extractable resources fail to develop. According to this view, outside capital interests that control these resources – in Appalachia, Big Coal – wield vast power, and often “capture,” or co-opt, regulatory agencies.

Coal mining is not the only challenge. Hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has been linked with negative health impacts. The 2014 Elk River chemical spill, which left 300,000 Appalachian citizens without potable water for up to nine days, spotlighted our aging industrial infrastructure and weak state regulation of industry.

Of course, laws and regulations are of little use if they are not robustly enforced. Pennsylvania adopted an amendment to its constitution in 1971 stating that “the people have a right to clean air” and “pure water.” It also requires the state to act as trustee of public natural resources “for the benefit of all the people.” For years Pennsylvania courts gave relatively light weight to this provision.

But in June of this year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court established a broader interpretation of the environmental amendment in an oil- and gas-related matter. This decision in a case that challenged the lucrative business of fracking was a heartening precedent, and shows the value of advocating for the people’s right to a healthy environment.

In fact, a dense network of grassroots activists and ordinary Appalachian citizens has long contested environmental injustices, exemplified by the long and bitter fight against Big Coal. But these efforts seldom are acknowledged in the national media or leveraged into real and lasting legal reform.

Appalachia is well-suited for a bottom-up, critically informed approach that focuses on human rights at the grassroots level. Discussing rights at the local level will give people opportunity to describe specific harms they have experienced from activities such as mountaintop removal and fracking. It also will help to promote participatory democracy for citizens who have long been denied real self-determination.

Working together

The Appalachian Justice Initiative at West Virginia University will produce scholarship, conduct policy advocacy and offer direct legal services and outreach to Appalachian communities. Our goal is to help people in our region call for laws and actions that actually guarantee the right to a healthy Appalachian environment.

Pursuing environmental human rights in Appalachia challenges counterproductive stereotypes about our region’s supposed isolation. Appalachia is not some “other America”: we are fundamentally interlinked with the United States and the wider world ecologically, economically and socially.

Our challenges reflect the profound ills of a global economic regime that values perpetual growth over environmental and social justice. Advocating for environmental human rights in Appalachia can help reveal this essential truth and build a more just and healthy future.